FAMILY NEWS AND NOTES
As the men serving on the communion table make their way toward the front to be seated, please begin to prepare your minds for our worship services.
Please remember …Each Member and Visitor needs to complete an
ATTENDANCE CARD and pass them to the inside aisle where they will be picked up at the appropriate time.
MEN’S BUSINESS MEETING following evening services today. All men of the congregation are encouraged to attend. 
BIBLE BOWL is scheduled for Monday evening, January 15, hosted by Mount Vernon congregation, will be conducted here at our building. Practice session at 5:00 PM Sunday evening. Be there!
Youth Devotional sign-up sheet on the round table in the foyer, needs people to sign up as volunteers to host the event each month. Won’t you help out here?
31st Annual Fort Worth Lectures will be conducted at Brown Trail School of Preaching Monday thru Wednesday, this week. If you are able to attend it might be beneficial to you.
Have you picked up your dishes from the kitchen, yet? If not, you need to do so ASAP. Thanks.
Add Betty Duncan to your prayer list because several members of her family are having health problems and they need our prayers.
Weldon Miller is back at home following the surgery he had last week, and it being much better.
Josephine Cooper is back at home again. She will be taking therapy at her home. Pat Dillard will be staying with her.
Perry Cooper has been discharged from the nursing home and is now at Pleasant Springs Nursing Center, Room 156. Keep them in your prayers.
Ann Carter has been sick at home for several weeks with respiratory problems. She is improved but still unable to attend services. Add her to your prayer list.
Grady Duncan had his medical procedure done this past week with regards to his heard and got a pretty good report from his doctor.
Patsy Duncan is scheduled for knee replacement on January 28th.
R. C. Grissom (at the writing of this bulletin) is back in the hospital again.
At some time during the parties at the McCain house someone left a “wired” telephone-earphone. If it belongs to you contact David McCain.
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PRAYER LIST
Justin Barker, Rachel Barker, Doris Bell, Louis & Nona Bell, Winell Blackard, Annah Brown, Sue Browning, Billye Campbell, Gene Campbell, Perry Cooper, Josephine Cooper, Ann Carter, Grady Duncan, Patsy Duncan, Jan Hargrove, Dorothy Kyle, Joyce Lee, Georgia Lide, Wade Miller, Weldon Miller, Ben McCain, Charles Neal, Elna O’Neal, Edith Shiflet, Rebecca Tippitt
ALSO: Lynn Barrett, Robert Brewster, Terri Coutoumanos, Wesley DuBose, Betty Duncan, William Embree, R. C. Grissom, Ted Klym, Betty Newman, Paul Unger, Bill Webb
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What Must I Do to be Saved?
By Floyd Kaiser
[Guest Article—The Southwesterner—Southwest church of Christ—Ada, OK]
When one turns from sin (repentance), it is because of belief in Jesus. It is much like a man named Zaccheus who when he witnessed Jesus said, “Behold, Lord, half of my possessions I will give to the poor, and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will give back four times as much” (Luke 19:8). He was willing to change how he lived.
Genuine belief in Jesus will change lives.
However, the change is not just a private one that one never talks about. No, change to live by the will of Jesus is not change at all unless it is open for the world to see. Sincere repentance invites the world to witness.
In Romans 10:9 it is written, “that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”
This audible confession, i.e. with the mouth, is how the world is called to witness the change that takes place. It is not a change just for change’s sake. It is not change just because a more profitable path is found. It is change because one accepts Jesus as “Lord.”
While the concept of “lord” might be foreign to our experiences today, those in the 1st Century, when the Bible was written, understood it well. Back then, some were slaves to men and the word was used to refer to their master, the one who had complete control of their lives, even to the extent of life and death. Therefore, when the Bible said that Jesus is confessed as “Lord,’ it means accepting Jesus’ ownership of them and surrendering obedience to whatever he commands. In Luke 6:46, Jesus asked men of his day, “Why do you call Me, ‘lord, lord,’ and do not what I say”
In John 19:38 we are introduced to Joseph of Arimathea who found the courage to step forward and ask Pilate for the body of Jesus which he himself then took down from the cross. It is said in this verse that Joseph, up to this time, was “a disciple of Jesus, but a secret one for fear of the Jews.” He was like many of his fellow Jews who believed in Jesus, but were too fearful of persecution to confess their belief (see John 12:42).
Do not mistake this: Joseph could not have been a Christian before he was willing to acknowledge his belief in Jesus. As it happened, this person of true dedication to his belief was finally compelled to confess his discipleship before the most powerful ruler before whom he might stand. He brought his loyalty out of the shadows into the light of human witness.
The New Testament never compromises the principle that salvation is only achieved openly and audibly, i.e. b y means of confession. The apostle Paul wrote, “Fight the good fight of faith; take hold of the eternal life to which you were called and you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses” (1 Timothy 6:12). Jesus said, “Therefore everyone who confesses Me before men, I will also confess him before My Father who is in heaven. But whoever denies Me before men, I will also deny him before my Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 10:32—33).
No single step of one becoming saved is more important than another. Each one should be acted upon with equal commitment for each represents a commandment of God designed to being us into conformity to what he has chosen for a saved person to be. When we reach that goal, having satisfied the requirements of change, then we may be confident, just as Christians were in the first century, that we are chosen of God (see Ephesians 1:4 and 2 Thessalonians 2:13, 14).
While baptism might not be more important than belief, repentance or confession, it does seem to occupy a more prominent position by virtue of it being the last act of obedience that actually transfers one into a saved condition. This is why Peter wrote, “Baptism now saves you” (1 Peter 3:21). This is why in every account of conversion, after the establishment of the church in Acts 2, men and women were baptized (see Acts 2:41, 8:12, 8:38, 9:18, 10:48, 16:33, 18.8, 19.5, 22:16).
What is baptism?
The Greek word, baptize, means “to dip repeatedly, to immerse, to submerge“ (Thayer’s Greek Definitions). The element into which one undergoes baptism or immersion for salvation is water. In Acts 8 an Ethiopian who wished to be saved asked the preacher who taught him the gospel, “Look! Water! What prevents me from being baptized” (verse 36)?
What about babies? Do they have to be baptized?
In Romans 7:9, the apostle Paul wrote, “I was once alive apart from the Law; but when the commandment came, sin became alive and I died. When Paul was a child, before he knew the difference between right and wrong that only the knowledge of the law of God can reveal, he was spiritually alive. However, when he became old enough to know about sin, he died and needed to be saved. This suggests, then, that children do not have to be baptized because they are already in a saved condition. This is why Jesus said about children, “For the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these” (Matthew 19:14).
One might wonder however, what it is about baptism that is so important, other that it being a commandment of God?
The answer is given in Romans 6:3, “Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into his death?” To the Christians to whom Paul wrote this verse, he considered it to be common knowledge that when they were baptized, it was “into Christ.” In Galatians 3:27, Paul wrote that they were “clothed” with Christ. Then, once one is “in” Christ, according to Ephesians 1;3, one receives “every spiritual blessing,” not the least of course would be eternal life.
While there is much controversy about baptism, what it is and whether it is necessary, the Bible presents it as a very lovely and spiritual event where sinner and Savior are united and made one in death and life. Here is what Paul wrote about it, ‘Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:4).
My friend, if you have not obeyed the gospel and would like to or if you would like to know more about what one must do to be saved please make a call to one of the elders or the preacher. Preparation for eternity is too serious to delay.
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